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Blaise posted:
I just did a trip to Joshua Tree and researched the gun laws, because we were also passing through some BLM land and I had some new acquisitions I wanted to try. According to what I read, thanks to a new law a couple of years ago you can indeed have firearms in NPs a long as they meet/are transported in respect to the laws of the state the park is in. No shooting in any park of course, but the BLM land a few miles down the fun 4x4 road? Cool (depending on any fire restrictions!) That being said I've spent a lot of time in CA deserts and never even come close to needing firepower. Almost always have something along with me though, especially if I'm out with the girlfriend. Good move texting your location - for those of you getting the wanderlust reading this, letting someone know where and what time you expect to be back is huge. Local search and rescue teams are very good, but figuring out where your dumb rear end started is the biggest part. My dad was one of the original first members of the China Lake area Mountain Rescue Group that operates near/in death valley. I grew up hearing "Don't be like a German Tourist" 
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Dec 25, 2014 19:16
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Blaise posted:We never felt threatened either, but you really are in the middle of nothing. If anything were to happen (a big if), you're on your own. Thus the recommendation! Absolutely, I'm with you there. I've had plenty of strange vehicles roll up to my campsite late at night, and while they all continued quietly past you never know... something solid under the pillow in your tent makes sudden headlights a lot less weird in remote places. OMGVBFLOL posted:California wilderness forests have bears and mountain lions, but the deserts are pretty well barren. There isn't much that's any bigger or more dangerous than snakes or coyotes. The coyotes know that campsites mean food but they spook easily; I've never in my life known a coyote to not high-tail it as fast as they can from a shout or a flashlight. Having a gun in the high desert is just trading one set of highly unlikely dangers for another. Not that people shouldn't be free to make that choice on their own, but it never made much sense to me. I've never worried about four legs in the desert, and my backyard in the foothills above Los Angeles has more bears than I've ever encountered in the wild. Coyotes are chill as hell and I'd give more cautious thought to a stray dog. Mountain lions are a different story. I stayed overnight in a giant wash at the base of San Gorgonio once (Whitewater River), and we found recent evidence of a lion getting either a bighorn sheep or something else... fresh bones scattered all over. What was weirder was that they were right in the middle of an older abandoned campsite - chairs folded up and stacked under a shrub, tent collapsed and weighted down with rocks. Judging by sun fade and dust they'd been that way for a year, maybe two... kind of looked like deer hunters who planned to come back but never did. That was a bizzare, remote place and I was glad to have brought along a pistol. Once I was out with a friend in a fairly remote but well-traveled area - earlier that morning I heard some guys magdumping pistols a half-mile up the canyon and thought "geeze, little close to a campsite there guys...". . About thirty minutes later a suburban rolled straight into our campsite and four tacticlol cargo short guys, all with various sidearms strapped to their hips jumped out, and came walking straight up to us. loving douchbags... my poor hippy friend was scared shitless but I walked out and started with the "Sounded like .40 and 9mm you guys were shooting, did I hear right?" bit. They were a bit taken aback that the hippies in the old FJ60 playing reggae knew what they had, so that tactic worked well. They handed us an empty water bottle with a California Red Velvet Ant inside - apparently there were a couple of other people out in the area with a butterfly net, so they captured the little guy and brought it to us thinking we were the bug hunters. A very surreal experience, but one with some good lessons - mainly, don't be the rear end in a top hat waving your guns around in a public area just because you can. Also, don't go waving your steel dick back in the heat of the moment, because they probably just want to give you an insect. The high desert owns. The Royal Nonesuch fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Dec 26, 2014 |
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Dec 26, 2014 02:09
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